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I was recently asked how Michael Jackson‘s death affected me. I had to be honest and report that it really had not impacted my life. I did feel bad that he had died at such a young age, but I would feel the same about the death of anyone who did not deserve to die.
Sure, I like some of his music and I thought Thriller had a rather kick ass video (especially since it had Vincent Price). However, I am not related to him I never met him in person, and never even exchanged emails with him. As such, I have no meaningful connection to him that would warrant a powerful emotional response to his untimely death.
Obviously enough, many people who did not know him personally have been devastated by his death. This is, most likely, because they attached great importance to him and he was somehow very significant in their lives. Some people can form such one way emotional bonds to someone who would not know them from Adam or Eve. In my own case, I only form strong attachments to people I actually know and expect the attachment to be reciprocated. Otherwise, the relationship would seem to be something of an illusion and a fantasy. But, perhaps that is a harsh thing to say.
Speaking of fantasy, I did see clips of Al Sharpton talking about Michael Jackson. Oddly enough, he claimed that Jackson somehow paved the way for Obama and presented Jackson as a figure of great social and political significance. While I do agree that Jackson was a talented performer, it seems inaccurate to cast him as paving the way for Obama. Jackson did not, as an adult, have to smash down racial barriers to become a star. He also did not seem to do much to fight against injustice and social ills in America. Rather, he seemed to be a rather typical (if very odd) celebrity: he spent lavishly on himself (and to buy his way out of lawsuits). Yes, he should be praised and honored for his work as a performer but it is absurd to present him as someone who changed the political and social fabric of America. Of course, I am open to evidence that he did have such an impact.
Speaking of the absurd, I also saw the clips of Joseph Jackson trying to use the publicity of his son’s death to push his latest scheme. While people do grieve in different ways, anyone with a sense of decency would realize that a son’s death should not be exploited to publicize a scheme. Not surprisingly, there has been a great deal of criticism about his actions. While I do not know the man, this latest shameless act seems consistent with what has been said about his character. If these claims are true, it certainly explains a great deal about Michael Jackson.
Finally, it seems that both Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are vying for a place in the spotlight gleaming down upon Michael Jackson’s death. While these two men might be honestly concerned about the families, one might suspect that they are primarily drawn by the publicity. But perhaps that is unfair. Or perhaps it is dead on.
I do, of course, feel sorry for Michael Jackson’s children. They lost their father and are now in the middle of a rather wild circus. I can only imagine just how odd their lives will be.
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“However, I am not related to him I never met him in person, and never even exchanged emails with him. As such, I have no meaningful connection to him that would warrant a powerful emotional response to his untimely death.”
This isn’t always true. When the Washington Post columnist Michael Kelley became the first journalist to die in Iraq, I felt pretty bad about it.
Not a White-Lights Person
By Michael Kelly
This column was published in the Washington Post on Dec. 12, 2001. The Post reran it on April 5, 2003, opposite an editorial about Kelly’s death.
I am Catholic and my wife is Jewish, so in our house we celebrate both Hanukah and Christmas, which our sons, Tom and Jack, regard as an excellent thing. People sometimes ask me if it is hard to raise children in respect and love for two great faiths that have a slight doctrinal disagreement between them, and I say: Not if you give them presents every day for eight days of Hanukah and for Christmas. The more Gods, the merrier is Tom and Jack’s strong belief.
Like other parents, we try not to let the materialism get out of hand, and to keep the focus on the sacred. This year, on the first day of Hanukah, we gave Tom, 5, a realistic, detachable, revolving red police cruiser roof light, so that he may follow the ancient Jewish holy practice of impersonating a state trooper. He received the gift with appropriate reverence. We gave Jack, 2, some Silly Putty. He received the gift in his hair, and now he is in a fine shape to play the role in the Christmas pageant of the Wondering Child With a Bald Spot.
Actually, Jack has not been cast in a pageant. Tom has, though. He has a walk-on in the pageant staged by our local Unitarian church. There was a rehearsal the other Sunday after the service, which featured the lighting of a menorah (during which apologies were offered to anyone who might take offense at a lighting before sundown), followed by the traditional singing of the great Christian hymn “Oh, Mitten Tree” (during which the faithful paraded around a tree that was decked, in fact, with mittens). A Unitarian pageant turns out to be different from a Roman Catholic one. In Tom’s pageant, Jesus Christ is celebrated as “a very special person” and “a great rabbi” and an all-around asset to the community. The Son-of-God debate, which has proved so regrettably contentious over the years, is not mentioned.
No doubt this is all to the good. There is too much disputation around Christmas anyway. One growing issue is the white vs. colored lights debate. Like all matters of taste, this is also a matter of class. White lights are high-class; colored lights are somewhat less so.
White lights make the statement that one is a refined sort who appreciates that less is more and who celebrates Christmas (and life in general) in such a fashion that one would not be absolutely mortified if Martha Stewart dropped by unexpectedly for tea. Colored lights make the statement that one is the sort of person who believes that Christmas is not Christmas without an electric sled and reindeer on the lawn, an electric Santa on the roof, an electric Frosty by the front gate and an electric Very Special Person in a manger on the porch.
Most of the houses in my neighborhood are white-light houses, and I have to admit they are lovely, but I was raised in a colored-light family, and I am raising Tom and Jack to be colored-light men too. They do not take a lot of convincing on this. Boys are naturally colored-lighters.
We got up the first three strings of our lights the weekend before last, and another two last weekend, at which time we threw away the rotted Halloween pumpkin. I might have gotten more lights up by now except that the remaining three strings are not working. To fix them you have to go through and find the burned-out bulb and replace it, and there are a lot of bulbs in a string, and the whole enterprise is one of those things that lead Daddy to point out that this is really the sort of job Mommy does better, and Mommy claims that she doesn’t know how to do it because she wasn’t raised in a colored-light family. This is a cop-out, and unworthy of her.
Still, I am confident we will get all the lights up by New Year’s, and all down by Easter. In my family, it was considered poor form to leave the lights up past Easter; it suggested shiftlessness. One elderly woman in our neighborhood did leave her lights up, and also her tree, and her electric Santa, all year around. But she was considered a special case and no one held it against her. This may have been because everyone back then was a colored-light person. Colored-lighters are more relaxed about this sort of thing than white-lighters.
But that was judgmental, wasn’t it? I should not be judgmental. I learned that from the Unitarians. Colored-lighters aren’t any better than white-lighters; we are all special persons. Very.
Interesting point. It is well worth considering what sort of meaningful attachments we can form to other people in ways that do not involve a two way street of interaction.
Judging by the piece you’ve chosen, your feelings about the death of Michael Kelley are not surprising and do not contradict Dr. LaBossiere’s atatement. Good writing does indeed create a “meaningful connection” between an author and a reader whose mind is open to the author’s message.
I agree with you. I think it’s psychologically unhealthy to have strong emotional attachments to people we personally don’t know. Also it’s annoying to me to put performers and actors on such a high pedestal. These people are normal individuals who’s way of making a living is to get others to adore them and/or their acting/music. Why do they deserve so much more respect from us than those in the research fields who better our lives through their studies whom we rarely hear about, for instance in medicine, engineering, and etc? How about those who work for no profit organizations without pay to better humanity?
While I do think it is okay to have favorable feelings towards people we have not met (for example, I think well of Socrates) the strong attachments people form towards celebrities they do not know strikes me as a bit problematic.
People do have an odd sense of value and often value most what is worth little. Socrates made an excellent point when he said:
“And so he proposes death as the penalty. And what shall I propose on my part, O men of Athens? Clearly that which is my due. And what is that which I ought to pay or to receive? What shall be done to the man who has never had the wit to be idle during his whole life; but has been careless of what the many care about – wealth, and family interests, and military offices, and speaking in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that I was really too honest a man to follow in this way and live, I did not go where I could do no good to you or to myself; but where I could do the greatest good privately to everyone of you, thither I went, and sought to persuade every man among you that he must look to himself, and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to the state before he looks to the interests of the state; and that this should be the order which he observes in all his actions. What shall be done to such a one? Doubtless some good thing, O men of Athens, if he has his reward; and the good should be of a kind suitable to him. What would be a reward suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, who desires leisure that he may instruct you? There can be no more fitting reward than maintenance in the Prytaneum, O men of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more than the citizen who has won the prize at Olympia in the horse or chariot race, whether the chariots were drawn by two horses or by many. For I am in want, and he has enough; and he only gives you the appearance of happiness, and I give you the reality. And if I am to estimate the penalty justly, I say that maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return. ”
-The Apology
Emotions are stronger than intellect, I think. Reading a textbook is sometimes painful for me. But give a novel written by a master (he’s a master because he knows how to manipulate my emotions–not my intellect) and I’m hooked).
Artists such as Jackson hit us with emotional lightning bolts–because that’s what good art does. It transmits the feeling of the author to the reader. weak emotion =weak art. So yes, I do feel something when someone like Jackson dies. I would not have hung out with the guy; intellectually I know there was something wrong with him and I wouldn’t want myself or my family to be infected with his strangeness. So while you won’t catch me weeping for him, I do realize that his music was powerful and that somehow connected his listeners permanently to him.
It’s just being human, not melodramatic.
Music as smells also bring back memories of nostalgia and better times. Luckily, I was never doing anything memorable when I listening to anything by Michael Jackson.